Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Wild: a brief review

taken from goodreads.com
Like many of the books I'm reading right now, this book was added to my Books-to-Movies list last year sometime, and I challenged myself to read it before I saw the movie. It was one of those books that just kept showing up everywhere, and every time I saw that hiking boot on the cover I got more excited and intrigued to finally read it. Well, I've read it now, and I didn't love it nearly as much as I'd hoped. I didn't hate it, and I'm still interested in watching the movie, but...I had some issues.

After Cheryl's mother dies and her marriage falls apart (due almost entirely to her multiple affairs and heroin usage), she decides to escape to the Pacific Crest Trail, hiking from southern California to Oregon. If you read many of the negative reviews on Goodreads, there are a whole lot of people who are upset with her complete lack of knowledge prior to her starting her journey; she bought books about the trail but didn't read them, didn't go on any hikes to prepare, and didn't even practice lifting or wearing her pack before the morning she set out. I wasn't as annoyed with that, although it does hurt her credibility quite a bit. It could be argued that she is that much more impressive because she did it and survived despite her lack of research....but...it could also be argued that a lot of the issues she had along the way (severe dehydration due to a lack of proper planning, a pack that was far too heavy, boots that were too small and therefore destroyed five of her toe nails) could have all be avoided if she had even the slightest clue of what she was doing.

The parts that really bothered me centered more around who she is as a person and the decisions she made along the way. When I read Mindy Kaling's book last week, all I could think about the whole time was how much I would love to sit and have a conversation with her in person; when I read this book, all I could think about was how I just don't like her. I'm deeply impressed with the fact that she hiked as much of the PCT as she did, and by herself at that, but that's about where it stops. The incredible selfishness with which she lives her life is infuriating. (Unavoidable spoilers ahead...) The scene in which Cheryl and her husband are meeting with the notary to finalize their divorce, she cries and pleads with the notary to believe that she still loves her husband. She chose to cheat on him (many, many times), she chose to spiral completely out of control, she chose to tell him and then spend months trying to decide whether to stay together or get divorced, but never once said anything about the marriage counselor they talked to or the work they put into fixing their problems...and then she cries and wants everyone to know how much she loves him? I just don't understand this. I don't understand calling it quits with someone, who you claim to still love, without doing any work at all to fix the problems first.

The part of her story that bothered me much, much more, though, was the abortion she decided to have right before beginning her journey on the PCT. Getting pregnant wasn't part of her plan and she thought she needed this time in the wilderness to discover herself and grow, I get it. She's probably right in her assessment that she was not in a great place to become a mother. But what if her journey to self-discovery and growth wasn't supposed to take place on the PCT? What if it had happened through an unplanned pregnancy that turned into a life changing opportunity to raise a beautiful son or daughter? Or what if, even better still, that unplanned pregnancy was supposed to be her opportunity for change and self-awareness while also providing a loving couple the chance to raise the child they couldn't have on their own? She could have chosen this incredibly self-sacrificing journey in place of hiking the PCT or just delayed her trip by a year (and actually spent that year doing some homework on backpacking and getting a little more prepared for her trip), but she chose instead to eliminate the problem and move on with her life. It was barely even a thought; there was one sentence stating her discovery of her pregnancy and one half sentence mentioning the abortion. "I got the abortion, and..." It was mentioned as an afterthought, and I almost stopped reading the book at that point. I just...it just makes me sad. The lack of consideration or respect for this incredibly huge thing just breaks my heart. And honestly, it made me really, really mad.

When I was in high school, my brother and I talked a lot about how we were going to hike the whole Appalachian Trail together sometime. We said it casually, as if we'd be able to wake up one morning and say "let's do that thing we're always talking about today." At that point, we'd never hiked more than a handful of miles at a time and had never camped overnight anywhere other than our own backyard, but it seemed totally doable to us. If I've learned anything from reading Wild, it's that my brother and I were complete idiots back then. I enjoyed her writing style, I enjoyed the things I was able to learn about backpacking, I didn't enjoy the language or sex (seriously...if you can't get your point across without the f-word showing up so many times, maybe you should just try again), but overall I'm glad I read it. I don't know that I can say with confidence that I liked it, but I also can't say that I hated it. I'm just glad I read it, have an educated opinion about it, and can cross it off the list.

Here's my updated 2015 reading goals list:
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